Dangers of Facebook Oversharing ~ Should Parents Post Pictures of Their Kids

You could be telling strangers exactly where you live when you share a picture on Facebook or Instagram.

Phones or devices with GPS technology contain tags that reveal exactly where the picture was taken.

Why do parents have to share EVERYTHING their children do on Facebook?

How much is too much information when it comes to sharing on Facebook? When does sharing become oversharing, and when does it become a personal safety risk? Some people out there actually like oversharing, and some don’t. Let’s take a look at both the lovers and the haters of oversharing.

Stalkers love oversharing:

Let’s face it, the Facebook Timeline is like a scrapbook for stalkers. Timeline provides an easy interface where your friends, and depending on your privacy settings, any toad in the world can have quick access to all the things that you’ve ever posted on Facebook.

Thieves love oversharing:

Want to make yourself an easy target for thieves? The easiest way to do this is to share your location information on Facebook.

If you just “checked-in” at the local gym and posted this to Facebook, then any thief who is trolling Facebook profiles will know that you are not at home. This would be a great time to rob you.

You may have restricted your privacy settings on Facebook to just friends, but what if a friend is logged into a publicly accessible computer, such as at a library, and forgets to log out or has their cell phone stolen? You can’t expect that your friends are the only ones who have access to your status and location just because your privacy settings are set to friends only.

Lawyers love oversharing:

Anything you do on Facebook can and may be used against you in a court of law. Lawyers absolutely love Facebook because it helps greatly in establishing a person’s character and where and when something took place. Facebook does a lot of legwork that a private investigator would normally have to do, such as learning who a person associates with (i.e. who their friends are).

Common Five dangers Facebook users expose themselves to, probably without aware of it:

Your information is being shared with third parties

Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign

Facebook ads may contain malware

Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable

Scammers are creating fake profiles

We share heaps of personal information on Facebook: birthdays, relationship statuses, geographical location and much, much more. In fact, with News Feed streams and Timeline-integrated apps, the line has blurred between participating in social media and completely oversharing the details of our lives.